"Sheri S. Tepper - Singer from the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

stone dike reemerged it was only a shallow ridge, rooted in the ribbon of shadow along
its eastern side. She slipped into the shade, her feet plopping into it as fish into water,
feeling the coolness rise to her knees, hips, to her waist as the wall loomed higher,
topping her head at last and continuing to rise in erose scallops and notches. A few yards
to her left a parallel wall emerged from the sand, and before long she moved in a blessed
corridor of shade and calm air, away from the forge of the sun, the huffing bellows of the
wind.
Both the shadowed lane and the hunters' misdirection were blessings. Perhaps the
wind wizards had decided to help her without being asked. Or perhaps Awhero had sent
someone into the desert with a sack of the baby's diapers, to draw the hunters away.
Several times Genevieve had heard either men or birds frighteningly close, but they had
always turned aside. She caught her breath at the memory of panic, yesterday's fear
adding to this moment's weariness. She bent to ease a sudden pain in her side, aware of
an overwhelming thirst. She reached for her waterbottle . . . Gone. Left where she'd been
sleeping!
She collapsed against the stone, head falling onto her knees, arms wrapped around her
head, holding herself together, denying the terror that threatened to erupt in hysterical
screaming or laughter or shouts of nonsense. Think, Genevieve, she told herself. Think.
The bottle had only a swallow or two left in it, not worth going back for. Besides, if the
men gave up on their current line of search and backtracked into the wind, they could still
come across her trail before dark. Also, when Tenopia had escaped from the Shah of
Mahahm-qum, she had reached a sanctuary on the third evening. This was Genevieve's
third evening, and she might already be within sight of the place the old woman called te
marae, he wahi oranga. Water or no, better go on than back.
She stood up again, putting one foot in front of the other, fighting the urge to lick her
lips. They were already split and bleeding. Licking them only made them worse. The
Mahahmbi wore veils across their faces when in the desert, and they carried unguents for
their lips and eyelids. That is, the men did. Women had no need of such stuff, for women
did not go into the desert. Except for Tenopia. And, come to think of it, she didn't know
what time of day Tenopia had run from Mahahm-qum. Genevieve herself had fled at
noon, or thereabout. She might have another half day to go.
She climbed drifting sand as the walls on either side of her were covered once more.
Beyond the dune was an area of gravelly hills, spotted with thorn. She stopped to take her
husband's locator from the pocket of his robe and check her direction, following the line
into the distance to find a landmark on the horizon. She had come this far from landmark
to landmark, south on south, and thank God for the locator, though now, with the sun
almost on the horizon, she could almost set a track at right angles to the shadows of the
thorn, streaming away to her left, shadows that went down the dune and all the way to the
top of another . . .
Color! At the shadow's end, a flicker of green, seen out of the corner of her right eye.
There, and again. She veered to the left, across the buried walls, and followed her own
attenuated silhouette up the dune, gray granules flowing as she slipped, plunged,
wallowed the last few meters, struggling to the top on hands and knees.
Below was the valley described in Tenopia's song, skullstones and dry bones, a dry
streambed littered with round white rocks. On the south and east, black-streaked cliffs
made a barricade against the sands, underlining bald and wrinkled mountains. Across the
dried streambed the walled refuge squatted ugly as a toad, built of the same stone as the
cliffs and topped by one stubby tower that flew the long triangle of the banner: a licking
flame of green bearing a single gold leaf.
"In desert, hope is small," Awhero had said. "Leaf is sign of hope, small, almost